When the World Doesn't Need Your Voice


Social media is loud.

Google says, "Every second, on average, around 6,000 tweets are tweeted on Twitter, which corresponds to over 350,000 tweets sent per minute, 500 million tweets per day and around 200 billion tweets per year."

Let those numbers sink in for a second. It's no wonder that on some days posting on social media feels like standing in the corner of a crowded party yelling at the top of my lungs for someone to pay attention to me.

Social media is the place to be. Churches and Christian organizations have realized that Facebook posts and YouTube videos are incredibly effective in sharing the gospel message. This post from almost four years ago describes the incredible benefit of smartphones and social media in the spreading of Scripture. The growing platforms of pastors and Bible teachers prove that the Holy Spirit is indeed using online ministry for God's glory.





Could it be, however, that social media has encouraged laziness in our gospel witness? Have we forgotten the command to "go into all the world" and instead expect the world to come to our website or fan page? I have been convicted of this very thing recently.

Matthew 9 records the words of Jesus to his disciples,
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

We have each been given a harvest field in which to labor. Mine happens to look like a tiny town in the Pennsylvania mountains. It includes a 177 year old church in an even smaller community and a toddler who has yet to give her life to Christ. It might also occasionally include a waitress or gas station attendant as I travel to visit family and friends (also included in that harvest field). My crop looks different and may yield different God-ordained results than yours, but we are each given the stewardship of time and talents to work the ground of our harvest field.

My heart has been grieved for the lack of time I spend in prayer for my lost extended family. We live miles apart and there is the very real likelihood that I will never interact with them in person again, but I can beg God to send a laborer to their field. I can ask the Spirit to pursue their lost hearts in a way that I will never be able to through an Instagram post.

The problem is that I too often spend time sowing and attempting to reap in fields that are not mine. While some may be called to speak to gigantic audiences, most of us will influence much smaller groups. I can spend huge amounts of time crafting the perfect tweet or advertising my latest blog post for those who will scroll right past.

Instead of using social media as a tool for ministry, I have turned it into a buffer to keep me clean from the sweat and tears involved in true gospel labor. I post a status from a godly worldview or pick a timely Bible verse and check the "witnessed today" box in my mental t0-do list of spiritual virtues.

The entire world does not need my singular voice. It will most likely get drowned out by all the noise anyway. Those in my path, in my everyday interactions, those in my harvest field need it desperately though. How are they to hear without someone preaching? (Romans 10:14).

Father, forgive my laziness and apathy toward those who are facing an eternity without You. Deliver me from the temptation to take the easy route when sharing my faith. Help me to offer my life, not just my tweets, for the furtherance of the good news as Jesus laid down His life for me. 
“If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.”– Charles Spurgeon